This invention provides improved material handling apparatus for application to small, relatively lightweight vehicles. It has particular advantage for use in application to farm type vehicles and will be so described, but only for the purpose of illustration and not by way of limitation.
The material handling equipment normally incorporated in a vehicle to serve as an agricultural loader comprises lift arms, a bucket type device pivoted to the outer ends of the lift arms, means anchoring the inner ends of the arms to an underlying vehicle and controls for pivoting the arms and tilting the bucket, the latter of which normally embodies tines. This is exemplified by the Series 22 Agricultural Loader made by Dunhan Lehr, Inc. at this time. The disadvantages of this type of conventional construction of a loader is that the outreach capabilities and lift capacity of its lift arms are limited. Instability of the structure is also inherent when applied to certain necessary functions. This mans that in many cases the small loaders are not quite adequate for their intended purpose and make farm jobs much more difficult and time consuming than they should be. Of course, one answer could be the use of much larger, heavier and costlier special equipment such as exemplified in U.S. Pat. No. 3,967,744, which requires the fabrication of a specially adapted or constructed vehicle. However, this ignores the needs and financial limitations of the small operator.
The feature of making extensible booms for lift arms as well as embodying stabilizers in connection with work vehicles is found in special types of equipment in the prior art. In no event, however, has it been found that these features have been so embodied in material handling equipment as to overcome the problems above mentioned, particularly in the limited field of application with which the present invention is concerned.
Apart from the foregoing, a further problem in use of prior art apparatus of the type described is a lack of simplicity in its installation and application and its inadequacy when considering the need for a useful and rugged lift arm assembly having general utility which can be safely and effectively applied to serve a material leveling as well as a lifting and depositing function.